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Automatic waveform recognition of overlapping low probability of intercept (LPI) radar signals is an important and challenging task in electronic reconnaissance of the increasingly complicated spectrum environment. In this article, an overlapping LPI waveform recognition processing framework incorporating residual attention-aided U-net generative adversarial network (GAN) and multiinstance multilabel (MIML) classifier is proposed. This framework includes five cascade modules and can achieve satisfactory recognition performance by training with single type of signals only. First, the training signals are transformed into time–frequency images. Then, a residual attention U-net GAN (RAUGAN) with residual learning is employed to reconstruct signal images from noise-contaminated images and with the supervision of the high-quality ones. After that, an instance generation module with asymmetric convolutions generates instance representations, which are then fed into the subsequent residual attention MIML classifier (RAMIML). Finally, an adaptive threshold calibration module is implemented to obtain appropriate thresholds for the final decision. Besides, two loss functions are elaborately designed for the RAUGAN and RAMIML, respectively. Extensive experimental results validate the recognition performance of the proposed framework with a recognition accuracy of 80$\%$ at signal-to-noise ratio $>-18$ dB and show higher robustness on the power ratios and generative performance compared with other state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi‐function radars (MFRs) are sophisticated sensors with fine‐grained modes, which modify their modulation types and parameters range generating various signals to fulfil different tasks, such as surveillance and tracking. In electromagnetic reconnaissance, recognition of MFR fine‐grained modes can provide a basis for analysing strategies and reaction. With the limit of real applications, it is hard to obtain a large number of labelled samples for existing methods to learn the difference between categories. Therefore, it is essential to develop new methods to extract general knowledge of MFRs and identify modes with only a few samples. This paper proposes a few‐shot learning (FSL) framework based on efficient neural architecture search (ENAS) with high robustness and portability, which designs a suitable network structure automated and quickly adapts to new environments. The experimental results show that the proposed method can still achieve excellent fine‐grained modulation recognition performance (92.6%) under the condition of ‐6 dB signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR), even when each class only provides one fixed‐duration signal sample. The robustness is also verified under different conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deinterleaving mixtures of radar pulse sequences is the first and the most vital step for modern electronic reconnaissance systems to intercept and analyze the intentions of noncooperative radars. Currently, these systems are facing great challenges due to the emerging complexity of radar modulations. This article proposes a novel method for deinterleaving mixtures of radar pulse sequences based on the time series characteristics of each source (component pulse sequences). First, the mathematical representations are established to describe the structural characteristics of each source. Then, the deinterleaving problem is formulated as a minimization of a maximum-likelihood cost function that can be solved efficiently through a supervised neural machine translation (NMT) network, i.e., to translate each received pulse in the interleaved pulse sequence to the corresponding source label. A sequence-to-sequence NMT model is proposed to capture the structural relationships among the nonadjacent pulses originated from the same source in the mixtures and assign the corresponding label to each pulse. The proposed method does not require the exact knowledge of each component pulse sequence. The experimental results based on the time of arrival sequence of mixed pulse sequences show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art deinterleaving methods and achieves satisfactory performance under highly nonideal situations with measuring noise and lost pulse conditions. The proposed method can be directly applied to other fields involving deinterleaving problems and multivariate input conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low probability of intercept (LPI) radar signals have been widely used in modern radars due to the advantages of being hardly intercepted by non-cooperative receivers. Therefore, the waveform recognition of LPI radar signals has recently gained increasing attention. In this letter, an improved LPI radar waveform recognition framework with local dense connection U-net and novel loss function is proposed. Specifically, radar signals are transformed into time-frequency images (TFIs) through time-frequency analysis techniques. Then, the local dense connection U-net is proposed to reduce interference of noise and enhance TFIs features. Finally, the recognition task is implemented through a deep convolutional neural network, which is trained with a noise-robust loss function called SSR-loss. Compared with other existing LPI radar waveform recognition frameworks, our method can obtain a significant improvement in recognition accuracy under noise conditions. When signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is as low as −10 dB, the overall probability of successful recognition on twelve kinds of typical modulated signals can reach up to 91.17%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multifunction radars (MFRs) are sophisticated sensors with significant intelligence, flexibility, and agility. It is important to analyze the system behavior and interpret the intentions of an MFR through the recognition of consecutive work modes in a pulse sequence. With the rapid development of MFRs, the agility capabilities in work mode modulations and the modulation parameters have increased, making the recognition task more challenging. Therefore, it is essential to develop new methods that are more adaptive and less depended on prior information. This article proposes a new method for the time series clustering of MFR work modes named as model-based radar time series clustering. The proposed method considers the variable modulation parameters of submode and employs three algorithms for different assumptions of progressive availability of the priors of a noncooperative MFR. The experiments with four typical pulse repetition interval modulations simulation samples validate the feasibility and the superior performance of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art pulse sequence clustering methods for recognition of MFR work modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How the human brain does recognition is still an open question. No physical or biological experiment can fully reveal this process. Psychological evidence is more about describing phenomena and laws than explaining the physiological processes behind them. The need for interpretability is well recognized. This paper proposes a new method for supervised pattern recognition based on the working pattern of implicit memory. The artificial neural network (ANN) is trained to simulate implicit memory. When an input vector is not in the training set, the ANN can treat the input as a "do not care" term. The ANN may output any value when the input is a "do not care" term since the training process needs to use as few neurons as possible. The trained ANN can be expressed as a function to design a pattern recognition algorithm. Using the Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology database, the experiments show the efficiency of the pattern recognition method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two packings derived from balanced incomplete block designs to construct quasi-cyclic spatially coupled LDPC convolutional codes (SC-LDPC-CCs). The construction gives time-invariant codes, since the sub-blocks corresponding to each time instant of the parity-check matrix are identical. Moreover, it provides flexible design rates and constraint lengths. Simulation results show that the proposed packing-based SC-LDPC-CCs outperform the existing time-invariant codes and perform closely to the time-varying protograph-based codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to propose the numerical methodology in optimizing the cusp gun for a 70-kV, 1-A W-band gyrotron traveling wave amplifier working at the second-harmonic TE21 mode. Two numerical methods using the simulated annealing algorithm (SAA) and genetic algorithm (GA) are adopted to perform the gun optimization. Classical electron optics software EGUN is employed to compute the beam trajectories. Maintaining the velocity ratio around 1.6, the axial velocity spreads optimized by SAA and GA are 1.44% and 0.33%, respectively, which means a great improvement compared with the manually optimized value of 2.78%. An analysis of the impact of parametric fluctuation on beam quality indicates that this cusp gun can be stably operated within a reasonable parameter scope. This paper will help to enhance the efficiency of electron gun design for gyrotron devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To accurately measure the performance of dielectric loaded circuits for gyrotron traveling wave tubes, a novel topological structure to generate the TE21○ or TE01○ (superscript represents circular waveguide) mode is proposed and verified in this paper. The topology is constituted by an overmoded TE10□ to TE20□ (superscript represents rectangular waveguide) mode converter with multiple matching steps and a taper from TE20□ to TE21○ or TE01○ mode. This topology allows the TE21○ or TE01○ mode to be excited by changing the taper dimensions. Simulation results reveal that the TE21○ and TE01○ mode converters, respectively, have a 1-dB bandwidth of 12.8 and 9.3 GHz with an excellent performance. Converters for the back-to-back millimeter-wave measurements were fabricated with computerized numerical control and wire cutting techniques. Vector network analyzer measurements are in good agreement with the simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, a novel triode-type magnetron injection gun (MIG) with three emitters designed for gyrotron traveling wave amplifiers has been presented. This MIG can be operated in Ku/Ka/Q single band or Ku-Ka/Ka-Q dual band. The optimization of the MIG is accomplished by a multiobjective genetic algorithm method. It is anticipated that this MIG possesses an axial velocity spread of <5% in all the operating frequency bands. The results of sensitivity study show that this MIG can work stably within reasonable parametric windows. Velocity spreads considering cathode surface roughness and initial thermal temperature are analyzed. Cathode configuration with heat insulation chambers is introduced to cut off the thermal flow among the emitters. Thermal analysis has been performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the soft-input soft-output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA), the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of each bit is determined by the minimum metric difference between the ML path and its competitive paths. This paper proposes to trim large metric differences in order to reduce the complexity of SOVA. By trimming the metric differences, only a small number of backtracking operations are carried out, while many LLRs may be omitted as the result of the lack of metric differences. By revealing the relationship among neighboring LLRs, the omitted LLRs are estimated from its neighoring LLRs as well as intrinsic information. The extrinsic information transfer chart analysis demonstrates that the proposed algorithm has similar convergence behavior as the Log-MAP algorithm, if the trimming factor $M$ is moderate. Other analyses verify that our approach provides good LLR quality with only at most $1/M$ backtracking operations of SOVA. Simulation results show that it outperforms SOVA and performs as well as its variants and the Log-MAP algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a methodology to excite a circular high-order TE13-mode via a rectangular TE50 mode was proposed and verified by the millimeter wave measurement. This topology can also be applied to launch other high-order modes (HOMs) such as TE 1n , TE 2n^\prime and TE 0n^\prime (n or n^\prime =1 , 2, 3) modes via different transition rectangular TE _{m0} ( m = 2n-1$ or $m = 2n^\prime $ ) modes, which can be achieved by adjusting the number of coupling apertures and optimizing dimensions of tapered waveguides. A W-band TE13 mode converter was designed and analyzed. Two identical converters connected back to back as a proof-of-principle operating at $Q$ -band were fabricated and measured. Good performance was observed, which was in good agreement with the simulation results. This HOM converter has many potential applications in areas such as gyro-devices, high-power transmission lines, RF multimode systems of accelerators, microwave/plasma, and antenna systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pulse position modulation‐ultra wideband (PPM–UWB) communication signal is hard to detect and sample directly, owing to its ultra‐low power spectral density and wide bandwidth. There are already some researches on using analogue‐to‐information converter (AIC) technology and compressed sensing (CS) theory to under‐sample and detect PPM‐UWB communication signal, utilising its sparseness in time domain. However, greedy algorithm lacks of restriction on sparseness of reconstructed vector, while common restrictions on sparseness (e.g. convex optimisation) has high computational complexity. To solve these problems, a combinatorial optimisation method is proposed in this study to detect PPM–UWB communication signal based on CS and AIC. Reconstruction error and sparseness of reconstructed vector are restricted by l2 ‐ and lp ‐norms, respectively. lp ‐norm (0 < p < 1), which is a non‐convex function, has stricter restriction on sparseness than l1 ‐norm. Meanwhile, the steepest descent method is adopted for lp ‐norm optimisation, which can rapidly converge to objective values. Proposed method has more comprehensive restriction than greedy algorithm and convex optimisation, while maintain low complexity in computation as greedy algorithm. Numerical experiments demonstrate the validity of proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the previous double-staggered grating waveguide slow-wave structures (SWSs), an improved design is presented in this paper. The linear profile of the beam tunnel is replaced by a curved shape on its broad side. The high-frequency characteristics and beam–wave interaction are presented before and after the alteration. A novel approach in loading the attenuator with high attenuation is proposed to ensure a stable beam–wave interaction for the improved SWS. From our calculations, the improved SWS possesses a larger average interaction impedance with a rate of about 13.1%. Particle-in-cell simulation predicts that the saturated output power, the corresponding gain, and the electronic efficiency are all significantly improved, with an increase of more than 1-kW output power and 3-dB gain over the operating frequency range, and the maximum efficiency increases from 19.4% to 22.2%. The operating bandwidth is almost unaffected, remaining in a frequency range from 38 to 46 GHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sheet beam gun (SBG) is operated at high temperature, and thermal expansion could induce huge electron beam degeneration. The previous SBG design, which did not take account of thermal expansion, obtained bad transportation performance. Experimental measurement showed that the distance variation between a cathode and an anode was larger than 0.42 mm, which could hugely degenerate beam performance. A new inner support rod with grooves was employed in this paper, and the heat power was reduced from 27 to 15.5 W, while the distance variation was reduced to 0.29 mm. The new SBG with adjustment according to the thermal expansion was fabricated and tested. The transportation rate after anode tunnel was enhanced to 98%, and the total transportation rate of sheet beam traveling wave tube with a period permanent magnet focusing structure was about 90%. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The weighted bit-reliability-based (wBRB) algorithm for nonbinary LDPC codes suffers certain loss of symbol-reliability. Thus, this paper enhances its soft-decision version by passing multiple symbol-reliability instead of bit-reliability. Furthermore, it demonstrates that plurality robustly indicates symbol-reliability of extrinsic information-sums. Thus, this paper enhances the hard-decision version by introducing symbol-reliability from plurality. Analysis results show that these two enhanced decoding algorithms significantly outperform the wBRB algorithm with reasonable overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A methodology to generate a circular TE13 mode for the operation of high-order mode (HOM) gyrotron-traveling-wave tubes is presented in this paper. A rectangular TE10 mode is efficiently converted into a circular TE13 mode using Y-type power dividers. Symmetric curved lossy dielectrics and dielectric rings are, respectively, positioned to suppress the potential coupling TE32 and TE71 modes according to their electric and magnetic field distribution properties. An HOM converter without dielectrics loaded was designed, constructed, and cold tested. Back-to-back transmission measurements exhibit good agreement with the results of computer simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RF circuit design, thermal analysis, fabrication, and measurement of a continuous wave (CW) high-power sheet beam traveling wave tube (SB-TWT) operating in the Ku-band were demonstrated in this paper. The slow wave structure circuit was constructed by double staggered grating waveguides (DSGWs), and the lossy dielectrics attached in the H-plane were applied to suppress parasitic oscillations. The Particle-in-cell simulation predicted that the CW SB-TWT can provide >20-kW output power in the band range of 16.2–18.5 GHz, with a maximum small signal gain of 38 dB. Microchannel cooling, which has been proved to be an efficient cooling method for microelectronic chip, very large scale integration, and power electronic modules with very high heat flux were introduced to improve the thermal capacity and heat dissipation ability. A thermal analysis of the RF circuit considering attenuated losses and electrons interception was studied in detail. Investigation shows that the RF circuit can operate with maximum $\sim 1$ -kW dielectric loss power (1.5 times of the loss power generated from the saturated output power at center frequency) and a maximum of 7% interception of electrons. Furthermore, an interaction circuit, including 23 DSGWs implanted with BeO–SiC to provide necessary attenuation, was fabricated and cold tested. Vector network analyzer RF measurement shows excellent performance and agrees very well with our prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to enhance the efficiency of confocal gyrotron traveling-wave tubes (gyro-TWTs), this paper is intended to present a novel triode-type magnetron injection gun for a 140-GHz 2-kW confocal gyro-TWT. This novel gun, which has a pair of sectorial emitters, is expected to obtain an axial velocity spread of 7.83% and a velocity ratio of 1.01 with an anode voltage of 35 kV and a beam current of 2.4 A. The design procedure has been given in detail. Computer simulations have been carried out using 3-D electromagnetic code computer simulation technology particle tracing. The sensitivity analysis has been performed to study the parametric dependence of modulating anode voltage, accelerating anode voltage, and cathode magnetic field on beam qualities. Results show that this novel gun can be operated stably within a certain parametric scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetron injection gun (MIG) is an important component in the gyro-traveling wave tube (gyro-TWT). The electron velocity spread induced to the mismatch of the electric and magnetic fields influences the performance of gyro-TWT. To improve electron beam quality, we designed a modulating anode with curved geometry. And the multi-objective genetic algorithm was employed to optimize the curved geometry. An electron beam with a velocity ratio of 1.05 and low transverse velocity spread of 0.31% in a MIG for a Q-band gyro-TWT is obtained. Compared with the previous design with a transverse velocity spread of 1.17%, the electron beam performance got improved. And the thermal analysis and parametric sensitivity were done. The curved MIG can stably provide an electron beam with a transverse spread lower than 0.8%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of a small misalignment of the inner rod in a corrugated coaxial-gyrotron on eigenvalue, resonant frequency, and electronic efficiency, and so forth, are presented. As a practical application, with the electronic velocity spread and cavity wall resistivity being taken into account, the beam–wave interaction of a 170 GHz megawatt corrugated coaxial-gyrotron operating with TE 31,12 mode has been investigated. The results show that the eigenvalue increases slightly when the ratio of misalignment to outer radius D/R increases in the case of small ratio of outer to inner radius C= R/R_{\rm {in}} , but is uniform in the case of large ratio of C$ . The electronic efficiency decrease slightly when $D/R$ increases within the range of 0–0.01. If $D/R$ increases to 0.02, the efficiency decreases seriously to only about 5%. For both cold cavity and hot cavity, the resonator frequency increases with $D/R$ increasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies how to learn approximate Nash equilibrium (NE) from static historical datasets by empirical game-theoretic analysis (EGTA), which provides a simulation-based framework to model complex multiagent interactions. Generally, EGTA requires plentiful interactions with the environment or simulator to estimate a cogent and tractable game model approximating the underlying game. However, these exploratory interactions often suffer from low data utilization efficiency and may not be feasible in risk-sensitive applications. To address these problems, this article investigates a new EGTA paradigm for offline settings and introduces a novel algorithm called conservative offline policy space response oracle (COPSRO) to identify NE from fixed datasets without active data collection. COPSRO initiates by extracting a set of strategies from the offline dataset to construct an overcomplete strategy population, achieving an approximation to the policy space of the original game. Then, COPSRO integrates the conservative critic (CC) to tackle the challenge of overestimation inherent in offline learning scenarios. Additionally, it devises the offline NE solver to iteratively compute approximate NE. Consequently, COPSRO can ascertain equilibrium strategies without real-world interaction, markedly enhancing its utility in risk-averse settings. This article provides both theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of COPSRO across various real-world tasks in the offline setting. Our method surpasses existing approaches in terms of convergence and exploitability, especially when the coverage ration of dataset is low (20% or 10%).

Broadband operation is of great importance for the applications of travelling wave tubes such as high-data communication and wideband radar. An input/output (I/O) structure operating with broadband property plays a significant role to achieve these applications. In this paper, a Y-type branch waveguide (YTBW) coupler and its improvements are proposed and utilized to construct an extremely wideband I/O structure to ensure the broadband operation for sheet beam travelling wave tubes (SB-TWTs). Cascaded reflection resonators are utilized to improve the isolation characteristic and transmission efficiency. Furthermore, to minimize the reflectivity of the port connected with the RF circuit, wave-absorbing material (WAM) is loaded in the resonator. Simulation results for the YTBW loaded with WAM predict an excellent performance with a 50.2% relative bandwidth for port reflectivity under -15 dB, transmission up to -1.5 dB, and meanwhile isolation under -20 dB. In addition, the coupler has a relatively compact configuration and the beam tunnel can be widened, which is beneficial for the propagation of the electrons. A Q-band YTBW loaded with two reflection resonators is fabricated and microwave tested. Vector network analyzer (VNA) measured results have an excellent agreement with our simulation, which verify our theoretical analysis and simulation calculation.

The growth and progression of most solid tumors depend on the initial transformation of the cancer cells and their response to stroma-associated signaling in the tumor microenvironment (1). Previously, research on the tumor microenvironment has focused primarily on tumor-stromal interactions (1-2). However, the tumor microenvironment also includes a variety of biophysical forces, whose effects remain poorly understood. These forces are biomechanical consequences of tumor growth that lead to changes in gene expression, cell division, differentiation and invasion(3). Matrix density (4), stiffness (5-6), and structure (6-7), interstitial fluid pressure (8), and interstitial fluid flow (8) are all altered during cancer progression. Interstitial fluid flow in particular is higher in tumors compared to normal tissues (8-10). The estimated interstitial fluid flow velocities were measured and found to be in the range of 0.1-3 μm s(-1), depending on tumor size and differentiation (9, 11). This is due to elevated interstitial fluid pressure caused by tumor-induced angiogenesis and increased vascular permeability (12). Interstitial fluid flow has been shown to increase invasion of cancer cells (13-14), vascular fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells (15). This invasion may be due to autologous chemotactic gradients created around cells in 3-D (16) or increased matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression (15), chemokine secretion and cell adhesion molecule expression (17). However, the mechanism by which cells sense fluid flow is not well understood. In addition to altering tumor cell behavior, interstitial fluid flow modulates the activity of other cells in the tumor microenvironment. It is associated with (a) driving differentiation of fibroblasts into tumor-promoting myofibroblasts (18), (b) transporting of antigens and other soluble factors to lymph nodes (19), and (c) modulating lymphatic endothelial cell morphogenesis (20). The technique presented here imposes interstitial fluid flow on cells in vitro and quantifies its effects on invasion (Figure 1). This method has been published in multiple studies to measure the effects of fluid flow on stromal and cancer cell invasion (13-15, 17). By changing the matrix composition, cell type, and cell concentration, this method can be applied to other diseases and physiological systems to study the effects of interstitial flow on cellular processes such as invasion, differentiation, proliferation, and gene expression.